Using Biomimicry to Design Smart Buildings

2021-2022 ULI Apgar Thought Leader Award winner Hans Papke, AIA, NCARB, Project Architect and Senior Associate at DLR Group will speak about the building that inspired his award-winning article in Urban Land magazine: “Using Biomimicry to Design Smart Buildings.”

The new Pinal County Attorney’s Office in Florence, Arizona, outside Phoenix, tells the story of how a design team addressed a county’s constrained budget by condensing the building footprint and maximizing energy efficiency through biomimicry of design elements found in the desert—specifically in the saguaro cactus. Biomimicry is not the same as bio-inspired design that makes a building look like an element of nature. It is not adding a green roof or a plant wall. Biomimicry studies and then replicates nature’s forms, processes, and ecosystems to create designs that affect the way a building functions.

Using Biomimicry to Design Smart Buildings